The emergence of DVB-H explains a puzzling purchase made last year by the transmission services company Crown Castle of Houston, Texas. The company, which runs the BBC�s transmitter network in the UK, paid $12 million for a 5-megahertz slice of coast-to-coast radio spectrum in the US.

At the time no one knew why. But used as a national cellphone broadcast frequency, Crown�s purchase may turn out to be an amazing bargain. Three Crown Castle transmitters near Pittsburgh are already broadcasting DVB-H to prototype Nokia mobile TV phones.